Married couples will be offered new tax breaks as one of the priorities of a
Conservative government, the shadow chancellor George Osborne has declared.

Mr Osborne says that encouraging marriage is essential to building a strong society and argues that it is right to reward marriage through the tax system.

It had previously been thought that the shadow chancellor was against encouraging marriage - in disagreement with the party's leader David Cameron.

However, in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Osborne says: "Marriage will be recognised in the tax system. If I am David's Chancellor - which I fully expect to be - then I will implement that. There is no disagreement there at all.

"Of course everyone is entitled to choose how to live their lives, and some marriages do fail, but we know that in general marriage is an institution that contributes to building a stronger society.

"That is why Labour was wrong to stop supporting it through the tax system and that is why we will recognise it."

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Senior Conservative sources have disclosed that the marriage tax perk will be introduced as an "early priority" of a Cameron administration. Mr Cameron has spoken repeatedly of his mission to mend Britain's "broken society" and is understand to regard this a key policy.

The Tory leader points to evidence that almost half of unmarried couples split up before their child's fifth birthday, compared with a divorce rate of one in 12.

The exact details of the tax breaks are still being drawn up, but it is likely to involve the Married Couples Tax Allowance being reinstated in some form.

The scheme, which was scrapped by Gordon Brown in 2000, allowed couples to pool their tax-free personal allowances. Therefore a woman entitled to the first £5,000 of her earnings tax free who decided to stay at home to care for her children, could transfer this allowance to her husband.

A restoration of this policy is likely to be welcomed by Conservative traditionalists who have repeatedly called on the Tory leadership to promise more tax cuts.

Mr Osborne has so far been reluctant not to offer "unfunded tax cuts" and it has not yet been disclosed how the policy will be paid for.

However, last year's announcements by the Tories on inheritance tax and stamp duty were widely credited with sparking the Conservative revival and the latest plans are also likely to prove popular with middle England.

Labour does not believe that it is fair to discriminate against single people - particularly lone parents - in the tax system but the Prime Minister may be tempted to follow the Tories' lead if Mr Osborne's pledge appears to be a vote winner.

Earlier this year official figures disclosed that married people are a minority in the adult population of Britain for the first time.

Most people above the age of 16 are now single, divorced or widowed, the Office for National Statistics says.

The number of weddings in England and Wales in 2006 was just 236,980 - the lowest number since 1895 and the smallest proportion of marriages compared to population since records began in the mid-Victorian era.

Supporters of the traditional family unit say marriage has considerable health and economic benefits for wider society.

Mr Osborne, in a wide-ranging interview today, also openly discusses how the Conservatives are drawing up detailed plans for Government and indicates that the party is now expecting to seize power at the next election.

Mr Osborne is masterminding the Conservatives' election strategy. He is charged at central office with co-ordinating the "bullets", the term used by the party to describe its policies. He accuses Mr Brown of being "obsessed" with Mr Cameron but claims that a change of Labour leadership will not bother the Conservatives.

He said: "If you're running a race and you're ahead, you don't have to keep looking over your shoulder. Just focus on what you're doing, setting the pace you want to set. We are not constantly terrified by the shadow of Gordon Brown and Labour.

"Interestingly, I think they are totally obsessed with us and spend their whole lives working out in minute detail what Cameron's going to say. In fact, he should just get on with being the PM and lead his country and stop obsessing about his opponents."

He says that he wishes to cut the size of the state but with the economic situation deteriorating, the capacity to offer tax reductions is limited.

In the interview, Mr Osborne also discloses that he and Mr Cameron have begun to disagree about policies as they work closely together to prepare for power. "We don't always agree on everything," he says.

"We come from different backgrounds and we have good lively debates about things. But on the big fundamentals - the changes necessary to the Conservative Party, keeping the Conservative Party on the centre ground in British politics and the economic changes that we need to make - we pretty much see eye to eye."

The shadow chancellor also discloses that he is not expecting a general election until 2010. Although he insists that the party is not complacent and that they have not written off Mr Brown, his comments suggest that he is now more focused on preparing detailed plans for Government than the election.

"We're thinking a lot more now about how we would act as a Government and the things we do early on as a Government," he said. "And the things we would need to achieve in that early period when you've got a lot of political goodwill having just won an election.

"We don't want to be just people who are good at winning elections, we want to be good at governing."

Mr Osborne is preparing to attack Gordon Brown in the autumn if the Prime Minister pushes ahead - as expected - with plans to borrow billions of pounds to fund schemes to help people with energy bills and kick-start the housing market.

"Is Gordon Brown going to recklessly borrow billions and billions of extra pounds in order to try and rescue his premiership?" Mr Osborne says. "If all we see this autumn is a political rescue plan rather than a long-term plan and if it is paid for by reckless borrowing, then I think he will pay a very heavy price for that. The Conservatives will not just stand by and let that happen."

The Conservatives are currently drawing up plans for a new fiscal framework which will set the parameters for borrowing, taxation and spending under a Tory administration. He said that the process will be overseen by an independent "judge" who can rule on whether the Government is breaking its economic rules.

"If you're going to have rules about budgets - fiscal rules - they should be independently verified so that the Chancellor doesn't become judge and jury," he says.